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Project #Project NameTrack (goal)Track (audience)Problem DescriptionProject PartnerContact InformationLinks and ResourcesSolution IdeasCommentsInterested hackers/ participants
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Project #2Helping those who are Recovering from Addiction During COVID-19Collecting and sharing informationVulnerable and underserved populations;People in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction have a unique set of challenges during this time. Many rely on on daily in-person AA and NA meetings or in-person needle exchange or outpatient programs to see them through this process. The locations of these meetings or support services were once known, accessible, and based on set geographic locations and schedules. COVID-19 has disrupted this network of support as everything has moved virtual, we need ways to help these individuals find support. This project seeks to consolidate information about support services (AA and NA meetings - Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings, needle exchange programs, in-patient and out-patient recovery programs, and more) and get this support to the people who need it most.City Councilor Julia Mejia: https://www.boston.gov/departments/city-council/julia-mejiahttps://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/27/820806440/opioid-addiction-is-a-disease-of-isolation-so-pandemic-puts-recovery-at-risk

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/covid-19-will-worsen-the-opioid-overdose-crisis-if-we-dont-prepare-now/

http://aa-intergroup.org/

https://www.aa.org/pages/en_US/update-on-covid-19-coronavirus

https://www.na.org/meetingsearch/
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Project #3Census Counting & Outreach to Immigrant CommunitiesCollecting and sharing informationStudents and schools, Vulnerable and underserved populations;This project is aimed at ensuring the inclusion of immigrants and refugees, especially undocumented folks, in the Census. We will do this by creating an smart chatbot that answers questions in multiple languages and records what questions users are asking. This needs to be built on Facebook Messenger, with a secondary priority on WhatsApp and third priority on WeChat. The ideal scenario is a link to census questions chatbot that can be posted on FB (for FB messenger) and if capacity, on the other two platforms mentioned.

The chatbot will start with a question of language preference and pull from the smart bot for Q&A. Data - questions that users are asking, not identifiable information - will be captured back into a database. This Q&A would also be provided in multiple languages.

Many immigrant populations engage on unique communications channels. For example, the Spanish speaking and Brasilian communities are often found on WhatsApp, WeChat is popular with the Chinese community, Facebook messenger is more popular with the Vietnamese, Arabic, Haitian-Creole , Khmer, Lao communities. Organizations seeking to reach these communiites may do better building apps, chatbots, or outreach strategies on these platofrms - whether its for getting information to them about the Census or resources associated with Covid19. It will be important to first figure out how to reach these communities on these platforms in a trusted way, but the benefits are that these sites might offer better identity and security protection.
MIRA: Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition: https://www.miracoalition.org/Vatsady Sivongxay https://miracoalition.org/people/vatsady-sivongxay/
https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/texts-not-door-knocks-us-census-outreach-shifts-amid-virus

https://www.prb.org/covid-19-and-the-2020-census-where-should-college-students-be-counted/

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/modifying-2020-operations-for-counting-college-students.html

https://www.minnpost.com/new-americans/2020/03/census-looks-to-immigrants-for-help-in-getting-an-accurate-count-covid-19-scuttles-some-early-efforts/

https://2020census.gov/en/ways-to-respond/responding-online.html

https://www.censushardtocountmaps2020.us/?mc_cid=79d61dbaf2&mc_eid=5fe71cef92
text campaigns, text bots,
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Project #5Neighbors Helping NeighborsGetting resources to those in need, Addressing Social IsolationVulnerable and underserved populations;People are feeling very disconnected from each other because of physical distancing. We need to maintain this practice while also getting help to those who need it most. Neighbor to neighbor support can be a solution during these times, i.e. identify people who live on your block who can be a support person if you can’t leave your house, because you are sick yourself, elderly, have underlying conditions or overwhelmed! Simple activities like taking the trash out, getting food at the nearby food pantry or the grocery store, delivering homemade food. There have been a number of efforts that have cropped up from mutual aid listings to existing sites like next door (see resources section for links)City Councilor Julia Mejia: https://www.boston.gov/departments/city-council/julia-mejiahttps://www.massjwj.net/news/2020/3/17/cover-19-mutual-aid-networks

https://nextdoor.com/

example of a needs list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10Xjbqg0X2PNwKEMZO7L93z5Ts8qFytOE_83FyPFmWYE/edit#gid=0

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X122NVSrb7VvgvJnkGng-HfxI8T8N3i7Wg7_pdRrtaM/edit#gid=0
web scraping, web interface for existing resource listings. Use people finder tools such as the voter file, the assessors database, social media, or whitepages.com to find and connect people who are nearby@ManuAlzuru on social media
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Project #6Virtual FinalsGoing virtualstudents and schoolsThe challenge of administering virtual exams for hundreds of thousands of students is a question many school administrators are wondering about. Usually, exams are given to a proctor who has a webcam, each focused on students to monitor student activity and be available for questions. There is an upper limit on the number of students that can be monitored virtually. There are companies that offer this service, such as ProctorU, but they are expensive and likely to be at maximum capacity soon. Are there alternative approaches or creative solutions that could make it easier for online proctors to monitor a larger number of students? Could they monitor select video frames of flagged movement based on anomalous activity identified by computer vision model? Could this happen after the fact based on a code of conduct signed by students? What are the privacy considerations that would need to be taken into account?Ernie Perez
Director of Ed Tech
Boston University Digital Learning and Innovation
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernperez/

Ernie Perez (ern@bu.edu)
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Project #7Connecting with Isolated YouthJM’s SafeSpace: Addressing social isolation, mental health, and maintaining connections for isolated youthVulnerable and underserved populations;
This project aims to create a platform for isolated youth to check in and facilitate both peer-to-peer and peer-to-mentor connection. Essentially, looking to create a virtual safe space for mental health check ins with the community of youth that are connected to the City Councilor and her team. Security is important for this platform - it could be a webapp or a mobile app - but it can’t be so onerous that people who need help cant get in. It's trying to solve the problem of finding ways for people to stay connected during Covid, building on the #weekly wellness check conversations that hte counselor is hosting. You can see examples here: https://tinyurl.com/Julia-wellness or here: https://tinyurl.com/julia-wellness2. Some people may want to participate anonymously for a while, some people may want to be paired with a buddy, The user could put out a line requesting a check-in, and then other users, including both peers and mentors, could respond.
City Councilor Julia Mejia: https://www.boston.gov/departments/city-council/julia-mejiahttps://teenempowerment.org/

https://www.bagly.org/what-we-are

https://www.zumix.org/

https://www.sociedadlatina.org/

https://jri.org/services/health-and-housing/health/boston-glass
matching site@ManuAlzuru
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Project #8Community Aid FundGetting resources to those in need
Vulnerable and underserved populations;
There is an urgent need to collect and distribute peer to peer cash assistance in an equitable, trusted, and efficient way, especially to communities who are not benefitting from official government assistance such as undocumented immigrants. Ideally, this system would need to accommodate multiple languages and multiple payment systems (cashapp, facebook, venmo, paypal, zelle, etc.). It will be critical to limit the collection of personal data that could compromise the identity of individuals being targeted by ICE. Another consideration is how to verify the applicants for funding, i.e. to ensure that there aren't multiple applications from the same people or scammers.City Councilor Julia Mejia: https://www.boston.gov/departments/city-council/julia-mejiaUse of Tax IDs for verification? Verification from trusted professionals with ethics requirements e.g. doctors, lawyers, etc.@ManuAlzuru
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Project #9Housing for Dislocated StudentsGetting resources to those in needstudents and schoolsThis pandemic has led to the sudden movement of students attending local area colleges and universities. Students with apartments have moved back home leaving apartments empty or roommates behind. At the same time, the sudden closure of dorms has left students scrambling for temporary housing. Students leaving apartments behind are looking to sublet their housing and perhaps find roommates so those left behind aren't isolated in their homes. A secondary problem associated with this matching is the desire to social distance while also looking at the prospective apartment. This project seeks to match students with sublets to those seeking housing and a mechanism for a virtual walk through (as opposed to landlord curated images that may not be as accurate as one would like).State Representative Suffolk-15 District Nika Elugardo
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Project #10Getting Resources to Non-Medical and Temporary Emergency Aid FacilitiesGetting resources to those in needVulnerable and underserved populations;Some regions have more infrastructure and support for vulnerable individuals than others. As a result, temporary emergency shelters and care facilities are being established alongside ongoing support service providers but lack the capabilities to efficiently collect the resources required to operate in these crisis times. Resource brokering platforms are needed for these front-line organizations to centralize drives for food, supplies, or equipment.

Examples of front-line workers who would benefit from this platform would be administrators of temporary or previously operating clinics, shelters, small community organizations, possibly property managers, and any other non-medical personnel doing essential work (who may be at risk because of it).

A proposed solution would allow users to register their organizations and report their inventories of critical items: masks, gloves, disinfectant, etc. as well as enter requests for items they need, ideally by enabling pre-filled shipping carts on sites like Amazon, CVS, Target, Stop & Shop or other third party registry sites. Charitable individuals or organizations could make direct payments to fulfill shopping cart wish lists, ensuring that these emergency aid or front-line organizations get the exact resources they need and leveraging delivery mechanisms already set up by the administrator of the emergency aid facility and the fulfilling company.
State Representative Suffolk-15 District Nika Elugardohttps://money.cnn.com/2017/11/29/technology/amazon-wish-lists/index.html

https://nonprofithub.org/fundraising/go-wish-list-donation-list/

https://www.target.com/gift-registry/kids-wish-list

https://www.ultimatedonations.org/donor/bjs-wholesale-club-product-donation

https://www.myregistry.com/Info/fundraising.aspx

https://www.giftster.com/news/2017/08/08/creating-charity-donation-registries-wish-lists/

https://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergencies/mobile-apps.html
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Project #11Local Covid19 Tracking and Trends - Your local community and your networkCollecting and sharing informationthe sick and their familiesJohns Hopkins is reporting cases and deaths down to the county level in the US. Can we create a detailed map of cases in Massachusetts and a deep dive into the Greater Boston Area? The hack is to scrape the site (maybe every 12 hours?) to generate time-based trends of cases at the county level. One could imagine doing this for the greater Boston area - It would be helpful to planners to have such information readily and automatically available. Scrape for lots of other counties across the country, in particular, regions roughly comparable to Boston. By comparing trends, you might be able to spot patterns that can help you plan or at least identify others across the country in the same circumstances. Include a communications channel that would make it easy for planners in one area (say Boston) to quickly conference with planners in a comparable area (say Baltimore) to compare notes.

A smaller variation of this project has been requested by WGBH, the local NPR station in Boston who is interested in an automated feed that scrapes data from the global numbers listed in the daily situation report issued by the WHO: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/. They will use this to update a dashboard they will display on their site. The output would be a csv file outputted daily that they can integrate into their website. This is desired ASAP and may be expanded upon in the future. If you are interested, please post in the #proj-track-covid-wgbh slack channel. The schema for the data would be as follows: DataSource; Date; Country name; Total Confirmed cases; Total Confirmed new cases; Total Deaths; Days since last reported case. Ideally, this data would include historical data, i.e. since first reported by the WHO on the link above. If possible, it would great to track the # of tests as this affects the overall understanding of the data.
Various


Lisa Tomlinson-Williams, WGBH
Lisa Tomlinson-Williams - Via Slack: #proj-track-covid-wgbh

World numbers: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/685d0ace521648f8a5beeeee1b9125cd

U.S numbers: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fcases-in-us.html

MA numbers: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/covid-19-cases-quarantine-and-monitoring#covid-19-cases-in-massachusetts-

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

https://infection2020.com/

https://covidusa.net/

https://covidactnow.org/

https://www.politico.com/interactives/2020/coronavirus-testing-by-state-chart-of-new-cases/

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-mortality-risk

Perry: This is not my project but does this dashboard meet the needs of the NPR station? (they are tracking actuals; but I am not sure they have all the needed details required): https://covid19dashboards.com/covid-19-us-case-estimation/Perry: FYI, There might be some synergies with the social distancing track of this Pydata-Boston hackathon (tracking movements from the Google Places API): https://www.meetup.com/PyData-Boston-Cambridge/events/269551893/
@Perry
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Project #12Tracking Covid-19 Policy and Outcomes & Feedback to Elected Officials - City-level (**see Project 26 also**)Collecting and sharing informationgeneral population; underserved and vulnerable populationsThere is so much information but not all of it makes sense or is easy to find, especially at the local level. City Councilor Mejia’s team thinks it would be really helpful to have a resource, updated regularly, with different types of information for Boston residents: (l) City/State policies and executive orders (2) Stats by neighborhood - tests, cases, deaths, disparities (3) Resources - top 5 resources (4) Feedback - polls/ surveys. Ideally this would be in app or a text bot with daily updates that people could sign up for or access directly. It would be great to have an interactive text bot where people can respond to polls/ surveys after receiving the information and the results could be stored on the site. The poll/survey could include a place to specify who your elected official is and what your feedback is to a simple survey question, i.e. if you feel safe, if you agree with the response updates, and if you understood the information.
Various: City Councilor Julia Mejiahttps://blog.instatrac.com/2020/03/26/bills-pertaining-to-the-covid-19-pandemic/

https://www.ncsl.org/research/health/state-action-on-coronavirus-covid-19.aspx

https://www.statehousenews.com/

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/covid-19-resources-and-guidance-for-businesses

https://www.sba.gov/page/coronavirus-covid-19-small-business-guidance-loan-resources

https://www.tbf.org/what-we-do/special-funds/covid-19-response-fund/other-covid-19-response-efforts
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Project #13Local Business Covid Map and Support PlatformCollecting and sharing informationsmall businessesLocal businesses are facing a myriad of challenges in the face of Covid19. The few businesses that are open need to get the word out they are open and their revised hours. Open restaurants need to publicize if they are offering delivery or pick up. Yelp, Google, and Grub Hub don’t seem to be keeping up to date with these details and not all services listed fall into the “essential business” categories so filtering these would be helpful as well. Additionally, knowing which businesses have gift cards, accept pre-orders, or have delivers could help keep revenue flowing during this time of disruption. Furthermore, like other entities, small businesses may benefit from connecting to other small businesses to manage staffing shortfalls, supply chain disruptions, and more or leveraging the technical expertise from local residents willing to offer their time, such as helping apply for state or federal Covid19 grant or loan programs, upgrading websites, creating shopify or gift card sites, and more.JP Centre/South Main Streets, West Roxbury Main Streets

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=b5c8ed302e9a493c91bee0a01b583cb4
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Project #14Real time monitoring of racist rhetoric linked to the COVID-19 pandemicCollecting, Visualizing or Disemminating InformationVulnerable and underserved populations;As a reaction to the COVID-19 epidemic, a number of conspiracy theories have emerged on social media inciting hatred towards minorities, in particular Chinese citizens and Asian-Americans. The goal of this project is to develop a Web app to trace these racist narratives in real time, allowing to identify hotspots of racist rhetoric online. The project collect data from Twitter and possibly other social networks and will use a number of analysis techniques coming from natural language processing, computer vision, and machine learning, and present the results through a real-time Web application.Gianluca Stringhini
BU ECE and iDRAMA Lab
gian@bu.edu
617-353-1542
https://seclab.bu.edu/people/gianluca/ (many relevant papers that will provide guidance on how to approach this problem)


https://thenextweb.com/world/2020/03/27/twitter-sees-900-increase-in-hate-speech-towards-china-because-coronavirus/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/us/chinese-coronavirus-racist-attacks.html

https://abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-warns-potential-surge-hate-crimes-asian-americans/story?id=69831920

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/03/18/us/politics/ap-us-virus-outbreak-trump-asians.html


https://www.adl.org/blog/reports-of-anti-asian-assaults-harassment-and-hate-crimes-rise-as-coronavirus-spreads

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/28/coronavirus-racism-asian-americans-report-fear-harassment-violence/2903745001/


https://apnews.com/a7c233f0b3bcdb72c06cca6271ba6713
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Project #15Tracking Covid-19 Impact DisparitiesCollecting, Visualizing or Disemminating InformationGeneral population In Boston, the hardest hit areas for Covid-19 seem to be East Boston and Hyde Park, which suggests that low income and communities of color are being disproportionately impacted by Covid-19. It would be interesting to examine the imapct of the virus on individuals in terms of both the # of cases and deaths based on demographic characteristics. The local NPR station is also interested in understanding the impact on different populations e.g. by occupation (e.g. first responders), by race, age, homelessness, immigrants, etc. There are select communities across the USA (e.g. Milwaukee) that are collecting race of those impacted by Covid19 - identifying the localities that have these data could be a first step. Other approaches could be using census tract data to analyze the demographics of the addresses of those who have tested positive (e.g. in this graphic visualizing data from the NY Dept. of Health: https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/covid-nyc)Various: City Councilor Julia Mejia, WGBHhttps://www.propublica.org/article/early-data-shows-african-americans-have-contracted-and-died-of-coronavirus-at-an-alarming-rate

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/covid-19-cases-quarantine-and-monitoring

https://madison365.com/early-data-shows-african-americans-have-contracted-and-died-of-coronavirus-at-an-alarming-rate/

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUxYi_6XkAcClXW?format=jpg&name=medium

https://www.universalhub.com/2020/some-boston-neighborhoods-seem-be-getting-hit

https://bphc.org/Documents/COVID19%20Week%2014%20Report.pdf
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Project #18Zoom fatigue/student engagementGoing virtualstudents and schoolshttps://trello.com/c/AV79sCof/16-find-a-pre-covid-tweet-dataset-for-analysisErnie Perez
Director of Ed Tech
Boston University Digital Learning and Innovation
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernperez/

Ernie Perez (ern@bu.edu)
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Project #19Teaching Tech (Faculty, Administrators, Elderly)Going virtualstudents and schools, vulnerable populationsPeople that have never relied on technology are now required to learn it, quickly. How can you help bring the level of technical proficiency up?Ernie Perez
Director of Ed Tech
Boston University Digital Learning and Innovation
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernperez/

Ernie Perez (ern@bu.edu)
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Project #20Remote Engineering ClassesGoing virtualstudents and schools How have faculty replaced hands-on activities in Design classes in Engineering; if this hasn't been worked out in a productive way from students' point-of-view, how could these activities be performed better in the virtual class environment?Dr. Deborah Breen, Director of the Center of Teaching & Learning
Office of Digital Learning and Innovation
Deb Breen (dfbreen@bu.edu)
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Project #21Remote Art ClassesGoing virtualstudents and schoolsHow have faculty replaced hands-on activities in performing and fine arts; plus, if this hasn't been worked out in a productive way from students' point-of-view, how could these activities be performed better in the virtual class environment?Office of Digital Learning and Innovation
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Project #22Virtual Mentoring and Advising Going virtualstudents and schoolsWhat changes might be necessary to the existing, predominantly face-to-face model, in order to guide students on their path to pursuing the interests, goals, courses, and experiential learning opportunities that will prepare them for personal and professional success? How might the innovative use of novel or existing technologies help mentors and advisors continue to deliver value to students? Students would be welcome to focus on mentoring and/or advising and to consider a range of possible approaches and technologies, such as predictive analytics, matching, AI, etc., as well as various stakeholders in mentoring roles (e.g., faculty, alumni, industry leaders, peers, etc.).Romy Ruukel | she/they
Director, Digital Initiatives
Digital Learning & Innovation | Boston University
https://digital.bu.edu; Diana Marian
Senior Project Manager
Digital Education Incubator | dmarian@bu.edu
Romy Ruukel | she/they
Director, Digital Initiatives
Digital Learning & Innovation | Boston University
https://digital.bu.edu; Diana Marian
Senior Project Manager
Digital Education Incubator | dmarian@bu.edu
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Project #26Mapping the Impact of State Policy On Covid 19 Spread
Collecting, Visualizing or Disemminating Informationgeneral population; frontline workers; vulnerable populationsFrom closing schools, to stay at home orders, to evictions moratoriums, public policy will have an impact on the spread of the COVID-19 virus and its consequences. With the US policy response concentrated in states, researchers at the Boston University School of Public Health started a database of the dates state passed policies to facilitate global research on the impact of policy on public health and economic outcomes. They have made these data available to the public through a Google Sheet with sources tracked in a Dropbox folder. The response to the first set of policies they posted has been enthusiastic. More than 115,000 people have viewed the Twitter post announcing the database, and between 40-70 people have been actively using the Google Sheet since its posting. The team is continually expanding the database with several additional policies and working to keep all of the policies updates. To improve how informative these policy data are for researchers and the public, the team hopes to have a website that allows users to filter the data, visualize, map, and compare data by state. The data could be linked with publicly available data on COVID cases and deaths (from Johns Hopkins or the New York Times) and economic indicators such as unemployment by state. The team is also interested in support to automate the collection of data across states.

The database includes info such as when a state of emergency was declared, when schools were closed, when non-essential businesses were closed and more. The number of policies they are tracking is growing daily and will soon include further information on health care policies, unemployment, and people who are incarcerated. There is also other data tied to the spread of illness such as population density, the number of people who are homeless, and more.

The spreadsheet tracking the policies is available here: https://tinyurl.com/statepolicies

The sources for the data can be found here via Dropbox: https://tinyurl.com/statepolicysources
Julia Raifman, ScD
Assistant Professor
Health Law, Policy, and Management
Boston University School of Public Health



Kristen Nocka, Research Fellow
Julia Raifman: jraifman@bu.edu


Kristen Nocka: knocka@bu.edu
The spreadsheet tracking the policies is available here: https://tinyurl.com/statepolicies

The sources for the data can be found here via Dropbox: https://tinyurl.com/statepolicysources

https://web.csg.org/covid19/executive-orders/
An interactive website that allows users to filter and compare data by policy, time, state, and more. Policy data could be linked with outcome data. Data downloads could request users share a name and email to enable researchers to follow up with others working with the data.

Building automated scrapers of executive orders posted here: https://web.csg.org/covid19/executive-orders/ and potentially from state department of public health and department of labor websites.
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Project #27Denying Protection to Trafficking Survivors in the Time of COVID-19Helping understand trends in protections for trafficking survivors that have increased impact due to COVID-19Vulnerable populationsIn the past two years, as President Trump has promised to fight the "epidemic of human trafficking," he has implemented policies to undermine protections for survivors of trafficking and make vulnerable communities more susceptible to human trafficking. One example is the increased denials of applications for T visas (or T nonimmigrant status), a special immigration status for immigrant victims of human trafficking. This issue is particularly acute now, as survivors are more vulnerable due to COVID-19 both to contracting the disease and also tend to be more isolated and unable to seek help due to stay-at-home policies.

This project seeks to engage in a data analysis of recent appeals decisions by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services regarding T visa applications. The analysis would involve conducting text searches across the application data set to understand better how USCIS is denying such applications and any relevant trends. This information will then be compared with results from a Freedom of Information Act Request that we plan to submit in April 2020. Ultimately, we seek to collect data and make findings for publication in an upcoming law review article and distributed to national partners. Currently, this project involves leading national anti-trafficking agencies working with immigrant survivors, including ASISTA Immigration Assistance, Freedom Network USA, and the Coalition Against Slavery and Trafficking.
Julie Dahlstrom, BU Law Immigrants' Rights and Human Trafficking Program
jadahl@bu.eduTechnology would be used for the data analysis described in answer to the previous question.
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Project #28Detect COVID-19 Fake NewsCollecting, visualizing, or disseminating information relevant to COVID-19General populationDetecting fake news about COVID-19 is important since misinformation exacerbates the problem further, slowing responders and negatively impacting understanding and health decisions more widely.Matt Lease, University of Texas at Austinml@utexas.orgMany annotated datasets and open source software tools exist for fake news in general. We need to collect and annotate fake news about COVID-19, then test and adapt detection algorithms from general fake news to COVID fake news.
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Project #29LGBT Resource SupportGetting resources to those in needVulnerable & resilient populationsLGBT people of all ages are facing unique challenges during this time that are not necessarily addressed by government policies or aid, from at-risk youth to the elders in our community remembering trauma from the AIDS epidemic. However, in order to create support systems that bring the community together, we need a mechanism that helps us identify the particular challenges that are widely affecting this population.City Councilor Julia Mejia: https://www.boston.gov/departments/city-council/julia-mejia
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Project #30Resource Provision for Trans YouthGetting resources to those in needVulnerable & resilient populationsStudents and young adults across the country are losing access to income due to the effects of the pandemic. Trans youth who are unable to afford proper equipment to deal with gender dysphoria risk physical injury through using makeshift solutions such as ACE bandages. This project is focused on providing resources such as bras, packers, and binders to trans youth who can no longer afford these necessities. In addition, this project also seeks to emphasize the particular needs of trans youth experiencing homelessness, as many trans youth have been kicked out of their homes.City Councilor Julia Mejia: https://www.boston.gov/departments/city-council/julia-mejia
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Project #31Democracy StudioPost-Crisis Economy and PoliticsLocalities, local communities, condosThe economic recession and the overflowing of the governements in the covid crisis, strengthen the emerging criticism from the citizens of the oldest democracies. Empowering communities in their capacity to self-organize alternatives asks for an all-in-one platform delivering the tools to vote, trade and act for mutual benefit at a local level. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations are already used by online communities of programmers and needs a few adaptation to be deployed in real-life situation such as condos, shopping malls and municipalities to share a progressive power of autonomization amongst localities. Julien Carbonnell, Smart-City entrepreneur & PhD Researcher in Urban Sciencenow@democracy.studio
Decentralized Autonomous Organization :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization

Theoretical background : network science for urban studies :
https://medium.com/@julien.carbonnell/theoretical-background-stakeholder-engagement-and-network-science-in-urban-studies-cca349c59e0d?source=friends_link&sk=e714c0328453fdc3c0b2279790602dca


Our Landing Page :
www.democracy.studio

Youtube Demo of our prototype :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGLu64LvoDw&t=8s


Democracy Studio is an all-in-one platform for decentralized alternatives! With it, users can trade,
vote and act for mutual benefit.
Able to generate a self-regulated smart social contract between the economy, the politic and
the people.

The platform in itself is available in a beta version, accessible from our website. The programmers are working on updates.
I'm looking for Data Science students who would like to work on network analysis with Python, in order to provide general rules of "balanced decision-making engaging all stakeholders" from datasets collected in three cities in Asia, Middle-East and North-Eastern Europe.
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Project #32Project CORAGetting resources to those in needVulnerable & resilient populationsMany communities are currently lacking in resources to respond to COVID-19, but there are also many people in those communities who have supplies that they would be willing to share in the right circumstances. Our goal is to enable the community to participate in meeting the critical needs of hospitals and other critical care organizations. Our team is creating a bot called CORA (Community Operations Resource Agent) which serves as a grassroots emergency response "helper" tool. Individuals and organizations can interact with CORA via mobile (SMS) to reach out for any critical needs they need fulfilled, or to share any supplies or skills they would be willing to contribute in the event of a local emergency in the communities where they live.Jonathan Brown, Software Development Engineervia slackThis is an extension of a project that Microsoft is working on as part of a recent Hack 4 Good hosted at the company
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Project #35Outreach System to Highest Need Families & StudentsGetting resources to those in needVulnerable populations; students and schoolsThe disruption of in-person schooling has eliminated important mechanisms of support for students and their families and hits high-need populations especially hard. Superintendents and school leaders need an effective way to outreach to and connect with highest need families and students in order to best provide school supplies and support. This project challenge is centered on facilitating outreach and engagement with this population.Wheelock School of EducationMary Churchill: machurch@bu.edu
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Project #36Support & Supplies Delivery for Students Experiencing HomelessnessGetting resources to those in needVulnerable populations; students and schoolsStudents experiencing homelessness require unique models of school supplies delivery and school support systems during this time. It is essential that resource provision during COVID-19 does not let these students slip through the cracks. This project seeks to identify the needs of this especially vulnerable population and create a way for students experiencing homelessness to receive supplies and support that is tailored to their circumstances.Wheelock School of EducationMary Churchill: machurch@bu.edu
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Project #37Calibrating Workload & Support for StudentsGetting resources to those in needVulnerable populations; students and schoolsCalibrate the amount of work students are given, minding the psychological safety, trust, and stability they need. This project seeks to facilitate the connection between students and education professionals (teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, advisors, etc.) and the communication of workload concerns and support needs given the rapidly changing and often unique circumstances that impact students.Wheelock School of Education
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Project #38Accessible Tech Support for Students & Their FamiliesGetting resources to those in needStudents and schoolsThe transition to virtual schooling is difficult for many students and families who need real-time, multilingual tech support in order to best navigate this new system. This project is aimed at building a mode of widely accessible tech support centered on the various platforms that students are now required to use. This project would supplement the existing multilingual parent hotlines directly provided by schools.Wheelock School of EducationMary Churchill: machurch@bu.edu
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Project #39Changing Minds, Saving LivesTracking and combatting misinformation related to COVID-19 by organizers of mass protestsMembers of the Facebook groups organizing the mass demonstrations against state closuresOver the past week, protests against coronavirus shutdown orders have popped up in a half-dozen U.S. states. Those are just the beginning. In the coming weeks, additional protests are planned across the country. The rapid growth of this social movement makes the protests appear to be grass roots. But it’s not. This is astroturf politics; a large scale exercise in social manipulation by political operatives using Facebook. While public health officials are urging non-essential workers to stay home to fight the spread of COVID-19, these operatives are risking lives by organizing potential “super-spreading events”. This project seeks to document the spread of misinformation within the Facebook groups that are being used to organize these protests, in the hopes of then seeding the groups with public health information. By doing so, the goal is to change minds, and save lives. Jeremy Menchik, Assistant Professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston UniversityJeremy Menchik: menchik@bu.edu
BU Today: https://www.bu.edu/articles/2020/anti-lockdown-protests-trump-reelection/
New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/us/politics/coronavirus-protests-trump.html
Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-conservative-networks-backing-anti-quarantine-protests/2020/04/22/da75c81e-83fe-11ea-a3eb-e9fc93160703_story


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Project #42Virtual SplashHelping people and institutions "go virtual"BU Students
“In order to keep students connected to activities and organizations there must be a tool that exists to for students to find these resources. Despite the challenges of COVID-19, students should still be able to participate in their respective organizations and be aware of what opportunities they have. Imagine a “dating app” where groups create a profile and new students can walk through a virtual activities fair “swiping right” if they’re interested in the organization, left if they’re not (or however that works). Then, if interested, they have the ability to click on the organization to get the full profile. Something creative and resourceful to give students knowledge about the organizations at BU.”

Dean John Battaglino, Student Activites Officejbattag@bu.edu; John Battaglino
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Project #43COVID-19 Check In/ Campus DistancingPrevent the spreadgeneral populationEvent/location check-in – Once COVID-19 testing is available, event/location check-ins can be used in contact tracing efforts. Another variation of this project could be a wifi sniffing app that nudges people to stay apart, i.e. through the use of an app that enables wifi pings to detect when other phones are closer than 10 feet with a verbal alert.People are not respecting the 6 feet social distancing protocol. How can we use cell phones, in a way that does not violate privacy, to activate audible warnings anytime another cell phone comes within the 6 feet perimeter? The ideal solution would use wifi pings from a closed network and signals from beacon sensorsDean John Battaglino, Student Activites Officejbattag@bu.edu; John Battaglino
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